Brief Story Line (warning possible spoiler)
Set in the land called Kumandra, 500 years after the major fight between five tribes to own the powerful gem that was converted from dragons magic, each of the tribe now owned a piece of it. Raya (Kelly Marie Tran - Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker etc) from the Heart tribe wanted to search for Sisu the last dragon to bring peace back to Kumandra. After finally meeting with Sisu (Awkwafina - Jumanji: The Next Level, The Angry Birds Movie 2 etc), Raya realized that she must also collect the remaining gem pieces to save the people & other dragons that were turned into stone by evil spirits called Druun.
With the help from young restaurant owner named Boun (Izaac Wang - Good Boys etc), they worked together to acquire the other pieces. However, it would be a challenging journey as they had to fight with people from other tribes like Tong (Benedict Wong - Doctor Strange, Gemini Man etc) from Spine land and Raya's old enemy, Namaari (Gemma Chan - Captain Marvel etc) with the queen Virana (Sandra Oh - Grey's Anatomy TV series etc) from Fang land.
And how would the story conclude? Find them all in this entertaining and amazing movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well that was indeed a very enjoyable film. I really loved the whole movie and it was one that brought quite strong emotions. From the start of the movie, I was already hooked by the story telling and the characters, especially with such beautiful animations. My goodness, they were truly amazing with the strong likeness to the real life cast, the wonderful face expressions and even the lips movement while conversing were just very realistic. I could immediately see the resemblance with the original faces like Awkwafina and in particular Daniel Dae Kim (Hellboy 2019 version, Lost TV series etc) as Raya's father Benja. Not to mention the fighting scenes were fantastic as well.
Aside from the great animations, I also like the story a lot. It was not too complicated to understand and despite knowing likely how the story would end, but the journey itself was really entertaining. The support characters apart from Raya and Sisu were not just in the movie as some kind of quota achievement but truly complete it. From the young Boun to Tong and Namaari, they were all just perfect. And obviously the cute and adorable Tuk-tuk and the baby.
I said above that the movie brought strong emotions as there were times when I was excited by the adventure, or laugh out loud during the funny moments and touched by the emotional moment towards the ending. All those emotions were enhanced by the fabulous background music. There was also a nice song titled Lead the Way sung by Jhené Aiko playing during the closing credits. There was no mid or post end credit scene here, but it was fun to just see the many familiar names on the cast list which kind of surprised me like Sung Kang, François Chau and Alan Tudyk.
What made me also enjoy the film was the familiarity with the environment and surrounding. It should not come as a surprise since the land of Kumandra was said to be inspired by South East Asian cultures. Being an Indonesian myself, I was happy to see it being represented in here. Btw, in Disney+ there were few short videos of deleted scenes and a bit of documentary of the makings and even some Easter Eggs, in case you want to see them.
Overall it was a lovely experience watching this movie. It has all the attributes that I loved in a film. If there is one thing that I did not really get was the 6 years timeline which did not really fit in with the age of people like Boun or the baby. Perhaps there was a logical explanation to it that I had to think myself. But anyway it was not a truly major bothering thing. So if you have not got the chance to see this movie in theaters when it played last time because you are like me and my wife who are not really comfortable going to the cinemas yet, then you can watch it in Disney+ from the comfort of your home. Plus you can also see those short videos I mentioned earlier.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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